Real Bread Blog has a new home

This Real Bread Campaign blog has moved back in to our own website, www.realbreadcampaign.org, where you can also join us as a member.

We hope to see you there soon.

What with The Real Baker-e, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, the Real Bread Campaign was collecting too many virtual homes. If you want to join the conversation, please come and find us in one of them.

A Local Loaves for Lammas diary

Though from the south of Staffordshire, I take no shame from using any and every opportunity of promoting the oatcake indigenous to the north of my home county. Even though its damp flannel texture may look less than appealing on the page, on the plate and in the mouth, the Staffie oatcake beats pretty much any other flatbread going. A south Indian parotta could give it a pretty good run for its money but it’d be a close thing.

And so for me began the day’s farinaceous fun with a multicultural take on huevos rancheros. One of my favourite breakfasts – which sounds much better in its original tongue than translated as ranch-style eggs – this Mexican dish is usually based on a pile of cornmeal flatbreads. As my other half isn’t too keen on these and as I was up early, I decided to knock up a batch of the Tunstall tortillas, too.

Going for half oats, half wheat flour, made up with fifty-fifty milk and water, as this was a spur of the moment culinary frenzy, I leavened the batter with instant yeast, rather than sourdough starter. Smothered in the tomato, onion and chilli sauce I rustled up while the batter was proving and topped with a poached egg, they brought about a tinge of jealousy as I tucked into the more traditional version of the dish on my own plate.

The next leg of the Lammas tour was a disappointment – a bakery that said they would bake a special loaf, hadn’t. Happily, over in Walthamstow, volunteers and friends of the Hornbeam Centre (pictured above) had entered into the spirit of things fully. One of the team had baked a loaf depicting a wheatsheaf and several regular customers of Hornbeam’s community café and local food co-operative market stall had brought along home-baked loaves to share with others.

Onward to Dalston, where the collective EXYZT has built a working windmill and artist Agnes Denes’ wheatfield is being restaged as part of Barbican Art Gallery’s Radical Nature exhibition. Although I’d found someone from the Growing Kitchen project in Shoreditch to teach breadmaking there the previous day for Local Loaves for Lammas, somehow I’d missed that The Dalston Mill also was hosting a bready event on the day that I was visiting.

The brainchild of Alex Bettler, Full Dinner Design invited visitors to a bread making session using flour from the mill itself. The latest in Alex’s ongoing, pain-European discussions around bread, the idea was to create edible crockery and cutlery for a shared evening feast. It was a really enjoyable afternoon, with children and adults, several of whom had just been drawn in from the street by the intrigue of a windmill on their doorstep, rolling up their sleeves to shape plates, beakers and spoons. These were then baked, alongside some more ornamental creations from the kids, in the mill’s two wood-fired ovens.

The afternoon’s drizzle turning to torrential rain only served to push closer our group that had been drawn together by shared activity. Sitting side by side around the long communal table, eating from our handmade trenchers and drinking beer brewed by another of the impromptu bakers was the perfect way to end Lammas.

Do you have any pictures from Lammas this year? If so, please feel free to share them with The Real Bread Campaign group on Flickr. If you have any stories from your event, please drop me a line.

Local Loaves for Lammas from the Real Bread Campaign will rise again on the weekend of 31st July - 1st August 2009

Lammas Loaf

This week, we have a guest blog from David Rose, Sustain's farm co-ordinator. In this first entry (hopefully, we'll persuade him to find time in his hectic schedule to bring us updates), he tells us of how things are going on his mission to bake a Local Loaf for Lammas with specially bred wheat from his own farm.

It’ll soon be the 1st of August, Lammas day - the highlight of summer, it’s a day we have planned for all year and we were so excited the baking of our first Loaf for Lammas.

However, here I sit, looking out on a sodden field of wet wheat, my plans in a puddle of clay brown rain water.

Never mind, there’s always tomorrow. You cannot be a farmer if you’re not prepared to beat the weather; my loaf will just have to wait a little longer.

My name David Rose and I’m 50 this year. I started working at Sustain six months ago and it’s changed my life. They say life begins at forty - well for me it’s come a little later.

As an arable farmer growing mainly wheat and oilseed rape, I assumed supplying direct to the public was not for me. Working for an organisation that brings together different groups who care about food, the environment and the future sustainability of food production, has shown me ways to reconnect to the consumer.

Martin runs Wakelyn's Agro-Forestry, a pioneering research farm in Suffolk, and leads Defra-funded studies into plant breeding for a post-petroleum world at The Organic Research Centre at Elm Farm in Berkshire. Elm Farm’s work is to develop and support sustainable land-use, agriculture and food systems, primarily within local economies, which build on organic principles to ensure the health and well-being of soil, plants, animals, men, women and their environment.

Martin told me about a project that was set up to research wheat production that allows farmers to be able to develop their own local varieties. This sounded fantastic and we were asked to become part of the HGCA trial - we were the only non organic farm to join the research - to develop these farm-specific varieties.

Basically, twelve milling and nine feed wheat varieties were cross-bred to produce the a high yielding (Y) population and a high protein/quality (Q) population. All parents were crossed to produce the Yield-Quality (YQ) Population. The populations these crossings produced are genetically diverse, as is indicated by the different heights of the wheat in the picture above - modern monocultural planting leads to more or less uniform straw length. From the successive saving and re-sowing of seed under particular local selective pressures, the idea being that the resulting crop may have the capability to adapt to variable environmental conditions, pests etc that are locally specific to the land on which the wheat is bred. Local resilience is particularly important for organic farms and with global climate change, increasingly so for all farming systems.

Well that was three years ago and we are now just about to harvest our second crop. We have set up links with a local miller and baker to see what sort of bread we can make on our farm. My real concern looking out onto the ever-darkening wheat field is that we have lost the protein levels we require within the wheat to make a local tasty loaf.

But never fear, we haven’t given up yet. Wait, is that a blue cloud I can see in the distance?

Catch you next time.

Farmer David


David Rose, is a co-founder and co-director of Farmeco UK Ltd, a contract farming company established as a collaborative farming venture by four neighboring farms in Nottinghamshire. David also works part time with the Campaign to Protect Rural England on a mapping project as part of Making Local Food Work.

You can read more about David's work at:
www.farmshop.net

For more information on Elm Farm's composite cross population wheat research, visit:
www.efrc.com/?go=ORC&page=Research#Crops Programme

Lammas: a national celebration of Real Bread

With the end of July hoving into sight, Lammas is almost upon us. We’ve had a great couple of months of chatting to Real Bread Campaign supporters around the country, who have been sharing with us their plans for 1st August. Up and down the land, local bakeries, millers and keen home bakers are marking this ancient harvest festival with activities such as baking loaves from locally milled flour and hosting breadmaking classes. You can find details of those we know of so far, here.

One local collective (pictured) that is keeping it real is being coordinated by Gilchester Organics in Northumberland. Having grown the cereal organically, Gilchesters then grinds its grain in the only registered organic mill in the north of England. Sybille Wilkinson of Gilchesters, which is supplying the grain to eight bakeries in the north east to bake a loaf to a recipe by Real Bread Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley, says:

“We felt it was important to celebrate the coming harvest, a critical point in our calendar and one much overlooked by modern Britain. We would like to bring this celebration back onto the High Street and remind families and bakeries locally just what it means to get the harvest in.”

So, not that we need an excuse to celebrate locally produced Real Bread but Lammas is a perfect one. Even if you can’t see anything near you on the list, please have a look on our Real Bread Finder and buy a locally baked loaf of Real Bread anyway. For those of you not fortunate to have a bakery nearby, it’s a chance to roll up your sleeves to get baking and seize control of the bread you eat.

In addition to the round up at www.realbreadcampaign.org, which will be updated closer to the day, you can let others know about your own plans and share your ideas for Lammas on the wall of the Real Bread Campaign’s Facebook group and by tweeting @RealBread on Twitter.

Mary Queen of Shops wants YOU!

There now follows a message to local, independent bakers from those Optomen people what make telly programmes...

Due to the huge success of earlier series, we are now making a 3rd series of BBC2’s ‘Mary Queen of Shops’ and offering a unique opportunity to an independent business like your own. Britain’s leading retail guru, Mary Portas turned Harvey Nichols into a modern powerhouse and she has a phenomenal talent for unlocking the potential of retail businesses – both large and small.

In this series we are championing the British high street and looking to help the shops that we hold very close to our hearts.

We are looking for independent bakeries that feel they may be getting ‘left behind’ and may be not doing as well as owners would like

• Are you finding it hard to make the money you would like to?


• Are you unsure about what to do to increase your takings?


• Maybe you have tried some changes that haven’t worked as well as you’d hoped?


• Would you like some help from Britain’s leading retail expert?
  

It is extremely difficult running a small business and with the current economic climate as an additional factor, it is no wonder that up to 100 shops a day are closing in Britain. But, through expert advice, sharing the tricks of the trade, and devising a solution specific to your store, we can try to get your bakery on the road to success. It’s a very special, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Please contact us to find out more. We would love to hear from you.

Please call Tom or Nikki on 020 7967 1285 or email queenofshops@optomen.com

And if you do get involved, please let realbread@sustainweb.org know, too.

Kerching!

After months of hard work, the Real Bread Campaign is now celebrating securing a Local Food grant from the Big Lottery Fund. Woohoo!

This new funding will help Sustain to appointment a permanent project officer to co-ordinate the campaign, a role filled until now by volunteers.

Over at least the next four years, we’ll be working around the country with independent bakers, public institutions such as schools and hospitals and local community projects including food co-ops and community cafés, to help make Real Bread accessible to more people from all sectors of society. We’ll also be continuing to promote the pleasures and benefits of locally produced Real Bread and helping to spread both commercial and domestic breadmaking skills.

All in all, it’s pretty exciting. As below, next on our calendar is Lammas on 1st August. Please get in touch if you want to join in the fun.

The Real Bread Campaign’s Local Loaves for Lammas

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Over centuries of international trade, many have forgotten that wheat and other cereals are seasonal crops. Fighting as it does for a return to localised, sustainable production, the Real Bread Campaign believes it’s high time for a shared celebration of the natural and seasonal heritage of our buns, baps and bloomers.

That’s why on 1st August we are calling on bread lovers across the land to enjoy a local loaf for Lammas.

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Taking its name from the Old English for loaf mass, this ancient harvest festival’s traditional highlight is eating bread baked with autumn’s first grain. Lammas is a great opportunity for everyone to seek out and enjoy locally produced Real Bread or roll up their sleeves and get baking. It’s also a chance for kids to find out that Real Bread is an all natural food that starts its life in a field not a factory.

We reckon that it’s a fine excuse for anyone who loves Real Bread to join the festivities with their own local activities and events.

Some ideas of how you can celebrate Lammas:

• Organise a Real Bread picnic for family, friends and other members of your local community


• Fun, tasty and messy hands-on learning by breadmaking with the kids


• Dig your bread machine out of the cupboard to make a loaf or two


• If you are lucky enough to have a local bakery, suggest they bake a special Lammas loaf


• If you are a local bakery, see the above.


• Learn to make a corn dolly (the Guild of Straw Craftsmen can give you tips)


• Go morris dancing (or perhaps just watch some morris dancers and then eat proper toast)

You can share your own ideas for Lammas activities and let others know about your event on the discussion board of our Facebook group. We’ll also be re-tweeting selected events sent to us @realbread on Twitter.

Closer to the day, we’ll put a round up of events at http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/.

Thanks to The Guild of Straw Craftsmen for the image of the Staffs knot above

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Hidden processing aids: allergens and GM

As we have outlined on the Real Bread Campaign website, some processing aids available on the market for use in the baking industry are of GM origin, whilst others are known allergens.

Although food labelling law allows processing aids to go undeclared, allergens and substances of GM origin used in food production do have to be listed.

But not all of them.

Having contacted the Food Standards Agency for clarification, we have learnt the following:

Allergens: as they are not on the list of specified allergens*, enzymes derived from fungal sources do not have to be listed. So, even though it has been found to cause an allergic reaction in some people, fungal alpha amylase does not have to be listed.

Genetically Modified Organisms: Processing aids do not fall within the scope of the GM food and feed regulations (EC/1829/2003). Therefore, even if the production of a loaf involves a processing aid that is an enzyme produced by a GM fungus or bacterium, the label does not have to declare so. The same applies to enzymes from non-GM fungi and bacteria that are cultured on material of GM origin.

It’s now pretty certain that production of any factory loaf could involve the use of processing aids. We are assured by The Federation of Bakers that their members use nothing of animal origin unless stated on the label but as for processing aids, they are remaining tight-lipped.

If any of this is concern and if you are lucky enough to have a local baker, we suggest you pop round and have a chat. He or she should be able to let you know exactly what is and isn’t used in their bread. Hopefully, you’ll find that they are baking Real Bread (see our Real Bread Finder for more) without the use of any processing aids or artificial anything.

* Allergen labelling regulation means that the use in food of wheat, rye, barley, oats, crustaceans, molluscs, eggs, fish, lupin, peanuts, nuts, soybeans, milk, celery, mustard, sesame and sulphur dioxide (at levels above 10mg/kg or 10 mg/litre) and any derivatives thereof must be listed on the label.

Statement from the Real Bread Campaign on the possible use of unlabelled processing aids in factory bread

19 May 2009

After repeated questioning by letter and email, the Real Bread Campaign at last has secured confirmation from The Federation of Bakers that nothing of animal or GM origin is used by any federation member in the manufacture of any product unless clearly stated on the label. The statement covers ingredients, additives and processing aids.

Further to this, copies of communications from the federation’s three largest member companies* have been passed to the Real Bread Campaign, each company confirming that it does not use enzymes of animal or GM origin at all.

Whilst the Real Bread Campaign welcomes the opportunity to share this clarification with British consumers, we are saddened that neither the federation of any of its member companies took the chance to reply to the Real Bread Campaign or the Real Food Festival with such unequivocal answers when we first put the question to each of them in a letter of 2 April.

We are further disappointed that the federation has not accepted any of our four written invitations to confirm that none of its member companies is using unlabelled processing aids in the manufacture of its products.

We therefore draw the following conclusions:

· Federation members may be using unlabelled processing aids.
· The federation has no intention of phasing out the use of processing aids.
· The federation has no intention of taking the voluntary step of declaring the use of processing aids on product labels.

We have again put these possibilities to the federation and await their reply.

Consumers in search of Real Bread made with all natural ingredients and no artificial additives or processing aids can search for their nearest local supply using the Real Bread Finder at http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/


The Real Bread Campaign


* The three largest members of The Federation of Bakers are Allied Bakeries, Premier Foods (Hovis) and Warburtons, with WD Irwin & Sons Limited, Frank Roberts & Sons Limited, Fine Lady Bakeries Limited, Delifrance (UK) Ltd. and William Jackson & Son Limited completing the membership.

Getting an upper crust upper crust

For some, the mention of Real Bread conjures up the image of an artisan loaf with a chewy, uneven crumb, toasty brown base and lacquer-like upper crust. That these characteristics are rarely spotted in the domestic loaf is reason enough for some to dismiss home baking as not able to produce what they see as Real Bread.

Although the Real Bread Campaign’s basic definition is more inclusive than this, believing that any loaf made with all natural ingredients is Real Bread, it sounded like a fun challenge. Here is the report from my latest attempt.

Once you find the right recipe, it’s not all that difficult for anyone with some experience of basic bread making to get the texture right, or a make a passable version of it. Several of the books listed in the soon-to-be-launched companions section of our website give such recipes.

The parts that are really difficult to achieve at home are that dark base and the glossy crust as, simply put, domestic cookers are pretty crap for baking fantastic bread. Firstly you need dizzyingly high levels of heat to evaporate moisture in the dough quickly enough in the first few minutes of baking to generate steam. The oven also must be close enough to airtight as to trap the majority of this steam to turn the outside the dough into a gel, a bit like the glossy skin of a Chinese steamed bun. This done, the heat will take care of the crust.

The ideal bit of kit is a wood-fired, brick and clay oven, which does all of the above. The oversight on the part of my landlords to install one of these in my flat in Shepherd’s Bush means I had to improvise. Here’s what I came up with. I inverted a large, thick walled stock pot (a cast iron casserole dish would do the trick) onto my pizza stone (it was a present, okay?), put them into the oven and whacked it up as high as it would go (in reality, about 20 degrees less than the 250°C it says on the dial) for twenty minutes to get up to temperature.

With the help of my gorgeous assistant (I really wanted to be a magician when I grew up), quickly as possible, I pulled out the oven shelf, lifted the pot, slid the loaf underneath, replaced the pot, slid the shelf back in and closed the oven door.

Fifteen minutes later, I whipped off the pot, closed the oven door, turned it down to about 190°C and left my loaf to bake for another half an hour.

The results? Not bad: although my oven won’t ever get up to the sort of temperature needed to get the taste of the base right, my upper crust was glossy and crispy.

If you enter into similar crusty breadventures yourself, we’d love to hear how you get on.

Chris Young

Title: insert bread related pun here

Fuelled by organic muesli, Radio 4 musings and the copy of Guardian columnists they came to the Real Bread Campaign stand at the Real Food Festival. Actually, although of foodie persuasion, the crowd was a little more mixed than that.

At the kind invitation of the festival organisers, our mission there was to share with the assembled masses the delights of Real Bread over adulterated imitations. Even though this was very much a home match, the overwhelmingly positive response that we received was heartening.

My interview with Channel 4 news on the campaign in the can, the first morning continued with a steady stream of interest from press and other visitors. Lunchtime saw me sharing a mike with the likes of Henrietta Green, Trevor Gulliver and Simon Majumdar at the Rude Health stand for a short rant on the subjects of our choosing. Unsurprisingly, my “preaching to the converted” (it’s a fair cop, Sarahdotcom, quoted in Word of Mouth) was born of our belief that the use of unlabelled processing aids in factory bread is just plain wrong, whatever the labelling regs say.

Proof, if it were needed, that the festival goers were believers in our aims and the processing aids issue in particular came courtesy of our petition to the big bakers for labelling transparency. A few weeks before the show, the Real Bread Campaign had joined forces with the organisers in penning a letter to the Federation of Bakers. In it, we invited the federation’s members, which collectively account for around 80% of UK bread production, to confirm that they do not use hidden processing aids in the manufacture of their products or to own up and clean up. Sadly, they did neither.

Fast forward to the festival and people were falling over themselves to sign. It was a job for members of our team to get halfway through the story before the pen was flying. Saturday alone saw 200 signatures, with the weekend total approaching 400 names.

Added to this Thomasina Miers and Clodagh McKenna offering recipes to the campaign and Raymond Blanc asking for our services in finding a supplier of breadmaking flour milled from wheat grown in Oxford, my first time out on the Real Bread Campaign roadshow was highly rewarding. I look forward to the next.

Right. I’m off to the kitchen with the bread donated to decorate our stand by Flour Power City, de Gustibus and K & S Bakery to come up with the leftover recipes that Love Food, Hate Waste want for their website.

Chris Young

Coming soon

The Real Bread Campaign will be starting to blog here soon.

Please visit http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/ for more details, to find Real Bread near you and to sign up for Breadcrumbs, our monthly e-newsletter.

For more frequent updates, please join the Real Bread Campaign group on facebook.

In the meantime, here's a bit about what we're about.

OUR MANIFESTO

Toast, sandwiches, chleb, bagels, naan, injera, wraps, pizza, pitta, pida...

However you enjoy yours, the Real Bread Campaign is fighting for a return to bread that is:

- Better for you
- Better for your community
- Better for the planet

How does the campaign work?

The Real Bread Campaign works to make Real Bread accessible to all, linking together bakers and consumers in:

· Stimulating demand – sharing with consumers the benefits of Real Bread over industrially-produced substitutes.
· Stimulating local supply – encouraging and supporting baking in schools, homes and local communities.
You can find out where to buy Real Bread in your area at our website: http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/

What is Real Bread?

The only essential ingredients of leavened bread are:

· Flour
· Water
· Yeast (cultured or naturally occurring)
· A small amount of salt (optional)

The making of Real Bread does not involve the use of any artificial additives, preservatives, flavourings, colourings or processing aids.

Any additional ingredients must be natural e.g. seeds, nuts, cheese, herbs, oils, fats and dried fruits, which themselves contain no artificial additives.

The gold standard is reached by Real Bread that:

· Is made with not only refined white flour (the inclusion of stoneground flour is preferable)
· Involves fermentation of at least four hours
· Is produced in one continuous process i.e. no part baking or freezing of the dough

The Real Bread Campaign also celebrates the use of certified organic and locally produced ingredients.

What about the supermarkets?

Whilst the Real Bread Campaign is striving for an invigoration of local, artisan production of Real Bread with the economic, environmental and social benefits this will bring, we recognise that around 95% of bread consumed in the UK is industrially produced.

As well as finding ways to bring Real Bread within reach of everyone, the Real Bread Campaign also works to convince industrial manufacturers to return to the production of Real Bread and fights for honest and transparent labelling regulations and practices in the meantime.

What can I do?

For more information, to recommend or search for Real Bread near you and to sign up for Real Bread Campaign email updates, please visit: http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/

Le pain se leve!

The Real Bread Campaign is co-ordinated by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.